Sunday, April 19, 2009

Chinese Dragon Body Art

Well, just for a change of pace, I’ll post this. I am interested in many different kinds of art (click some of the links under “Visually Interesting Posts” over at the right). Body painting is an emerging art form, apparently well known in many circles but very unusual and esoteric to the rest of us. One of the most popular posts I have done is one about last year’s South Korean Body Art Festival.

How “serious” this is as a true art form I suppose is debatable. Much of its popularity is, no doubt, related to the very high titillation factor of female models being used as the “canvas”, such as the photos of body paintings that are now showing up in the yearly Sports Illustrated famous swimsuit issue. Yes, there is that. Men always have and always will enjoy looking at the female form. Famous artists throughout history, such as Bottcelli, Degas and Modigliani, to name just a few, have painted canvases featuring females in various degrees of undress. Body painting seems to have turned the “classical” art form upside down. Instead of the female being the subject of the painting, the female is now the canvas and the subject of the painting usually has very little to do with the female physical form.

I really do enjoy the artistic aspects of these photos. This particular body painting, for example, is very striking. (I like Chinese dragons as well.) I don’t usually post adult-oriented material on this blog, or something that would turn off any female that might come across it. But this photo, from Human Body Art, just really caught my eye. How much effort the artists put into these works is pretty astounding, given that, by its very nature, it is very temporary in nature. Somewhat like drawing on the sidewalk in colored chalk, you know it isn’t going to be around very long. That is when the photographic aspect of the artwork comes in. There is quite a bit of effort that goes into making the final photograph of the art in question getting the model posed correctly, getting the lighting just right, having a good background to bring out the subject, etc. So, there may be several different “artists” involved in making the final product.

For much more on this subject, go check out Human Body Art. There are some pretty amazing works of body art presented there. Warning, there is some significant nudity involved in many of the shots. However, I think it is presented in a very tasteful manner. There is much more overtly sexual stuff that can very easily be found on the web, so I doubt I will be corrupting any impressionable youngsters.